Biden Wants Torture Report Released

The Senate Intelligence Committee put out a massive and comprehensive report on the use of torture by the government, but no one outside the government has ever seen it because the CIA is afraid it will reveal too much. Vice President Joe Biden says he thinks it should be released:

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Friday night that he supports making a classified Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture and enhanced interrogation more available to the public…

Speaking about the classified Senate Intelligence report on the use of torture or enhanced interrogation by the United States, Biden suggested that his personal view is that he agrees with McCain that more information should be made public, while he noted it has been the subject of intense debate at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

“Now this voluminous study has been done,” Biden said. “And the internal debate that goes on in the Congress and in the White House is, do we go back and do we expose it? Do we lay out who was responsible and how we got to where we are?”

“It offends the fundamentals of what kind of country we are, and the practical side of it is, don’t think it didn’t damage the United States’ image in the world in ways that we’ll be paying for for years to come,” McCain said, noting his support for disclosing more details of what happened.

“It is not resolved yet, John, but I’m where you are. I think the only way you excise the demons is you acknowledge, you acknowledge exactly what happened straightforward,” Biden said. He explained his position that issues related to torture must be laid out before a country can move beyond them, citing the war crimes committed in the Balkans and other acts of torture overseas.

Tell your boss that. If President Obama wanted that report to be released, it would be released. But that would also put pressure on him to actually do something about it. What that report reveals are crimes, very serious crimes, not only of American law but of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture. And that’s why Obama doesn’t want it released, because he not only hasn’t done anything to prosecute those crimes, he has actively prevented any attempt to do so.